The Role of Beliefs in Music Teacher Agency: A Case Study

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session Eight
  In Roundtable Session: Exploring Issues in Music Education (Table 13)

Abstract

The purpose of this instrumental case study is to examine the role of music educators’ beliefs within the complex phenomenon of agency. Our research questions, following Biesta et al. (2015) are: (a) Where do teachers’ beliefs come from (the iterative dimension)? (b) How do beliefs “motivate” action (the projective dimension)? (c) How do beliefs influence what is actually done, that is, how do they function as resources for engagement in the concrete situations in and through which teachers act? and (d) How does education policy function in teacher agency, which is “always a dialogical process by and through which actors immersed in temporal passage engage with others within collectively organized contexts of action” (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998, p. 974)?

Authors

• Olivia Tucker, University of New Mexico
  Presenting Author

• Sean Powell, University of North Texas
  Presenting Author